Market your course: The beauty of using a course to make money online is that you can continue to sell it for as long as you’d like. Look for niche communities on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Reddit that might benefit from your content. Guest blogging on relevant sites. Look for anywhere you might be able to get in front of the right people. With just a few hours a month you can continue to generate sales.

If you are more interested in the coding side of building websites, freelance web development might be your wheelhouse. If you already know HTML, CSS or JavaScript and have a good eye for solving problems with creative solutions, you can launch a service to build attractive, easy-to-use websites for small businesses. If you need to learn the basics of web developing before launching your full-stack career, you can take a simple beginner's course to get started.

Why? Let's take a look at the numbers for a moment. Consider this: according to a report by eMarketer, digital ad spending in the U.S. will exceed traditional ad spending for the first time this year. By 2023, digital will surpass two-thirds of total media spending. Total digital ad spending in the U.S. will grow 19% to $129.34 billion this year -- 54.2% of estimated total U.S. ad spending.
Zilok is free for individual members to create listings, but rental businesses have to pay fees. To list your item on Zilok, you’ll have to create a post with a description, photos and a price per day. Once a renter finds your product, Zilok takes a commission depending on the listing price. For everything under $10, the commission fee is $1. Fees range between 5% and 9% for all other price categories.
Facebook ads are nothing new. They’re also not going away any time soon. Think for a moment about the last time you saw a Facebook ad for a local small business. (And not the giant brands around you like Kroger, Walmart, etc.) Can’t remember? That doesn’t surprise us. It’s because while local small business would like to advertise, odds are they don’t have someone in-house that’s wise enough to effectively run campaigns for them without losing money.
If you're interested in online marketing, setup email software and create a lead magnet that you can use in your sales funnel. Then, build up that list. It's often said that you can expect to earn about $1 per subscriber per month. If you have a list of 10,000 subscribers, that means you can earn roughly around $10,000 per month. You will need to deliver value and not pitch them on every email, but it is a very achievable goal in a short period.
Then, if my piece of content is so unique and valuable around hiking backpack recommendations, that other reputable outdoor websites are willing to link to it and build the page’s authority, then I’d have a very real opportunity to rank high in organic search for these search terms (meaning, my page will come up first when someone searches for hiking backpacks).

Blogging is still a viable online business idea, and one with as much potential as ever. Just make sure that you start a blog on something that people actually want to read about. If that happens to be something you’re passionate about that’s great. But you need to understand that it’s way easier to monetize a blog about organic dog food than it is to make money from a blog about obscure literary fiction.

If you're ready to enter the ecommerce fray, you could sell your own stuff. Of course, along with selling your own stuff on your own website comes a whole slew of both responsibilities and technical configuration and requirements. For starters, you'll need a website and a hosting account. You'll also need a merchant account like ones offered by Stripe or PayPal. Then you'll need to design that site, build a sales funnel, create a lead magnet and do some email marketing.

If you’ve developed valuable skill sets or picked up certifications within your industry over the years, offering your consulting services to local business owners can be a lucrative way to make money online. Whether you’re an expert marketer, business strategist, or manufacturing aficionado, there’s likely a local business owner who’s willing to pay you to help them solve an issue with their company. Start with my guide to launching a freelance (consulting) business and then use my breakdown of crafting an effective cold email to convince local small business owners to hire you.

Choose your niche and check for demand: The golden course combination is when you can find an in-demand niche that aligns with your skills and unique experiences. A great way to do this is to use Google Trends, Google’s Keyword Planner and other key blogging tools to do keyword research and look for average monthly search volume for keywords related to your proposed course content. Are people actively looking for high-quality information about this subject? Of course, if you’re already creating content for a blog, coaching service, or a site like Medium, you can test demand this way for free just like Bryan did.
Mechanical Turk: Amazon's Mechanical Turk is a resource for doing human-intelligence tasks, or as the site commonly refers to them, HITs. You get paid a very small fee for any given HIT and you'll need a good deal of volume to make a substantial amount of money. But it is a resource you can use in your spare time to generate a small income online.
Startup costs: It depends on how you want to teach. If you made a course through something like Udemy, your start up costs could be $0. If you want to make your own website to sell videos or courses, then you’ll need to spend a little bit on hosting. I’ve used Bluehost for tons of my niche sites. If you’re starting an online business, Bluehost helps you get started with cheap hosting and a .com domain name. Try them out to get your online business going.

How many email newsletters are you bombarded with every single day? There’s a reason for that. Email marketing to an actively interested group of email subscribers is one of the best ways to make money online. There have even been million-dollar businesses built from simple email newsletters like TheSkimm, or Mister Spoils. Each newsletter targets a specific type of user with interesting, daily content, while also partnering with relevant companies and affiliates to bring in extra money. If this seems daunting, it’s not. Email marketing tools like MailChimp, ConvertKit, HubSpot and AWeber make it easier than ever to get started with email marketing. Here’s my comparison of ConvertKit vs AWeber vs Mailchimp to review a few of my top picks. And another great option to consider (with the largest free plan available) is SendPulse, with their ability to send up to 15,000 emails per month to 2,500 subscribers, and then affordable plans starting at under $10/month as you grow from there.

There's an audience for everything, even if it's as specific as dollhouse furniture or organic dog food. With a niche e-commerce store, you can reach customers who seek your specific products. Building a business in a niche market can help you differentiate yourself from other brands and build your credibility and expertise. Look to social media or your own consumer needs to come up with a product to sell online.

Blogging is still a viable online business idea, and one with as much potential as ever. Just make sure that you start a blog on something that people actually want to read about. If that happens to be something you’re passionate about that’s great. But you need to understand that it’s way easier to monetize a blog about organic dog food than it is to make money from a blog about obscure literary fiction.

No matter what method you choose to make money online, understand that you might be able to make some money fast, but for the sizable returns, you'll need significant sweat equity. However, a year from now, you'll be happy you started today. Remember, time is far more valuable than money. Focus on creating passive income streams that will free up your time so that you can quit the rat race and focus on the things that matter.

The ego is the driver making the decisions. It decides between the devil (the id) and the angel (the super-ego) on either shoulder (yes, all those cartoons you've ever seen are partly true). We have voices in our mind, and it's up to the ego to decide which one to fulfill. Its goal is to satisfy the id in some way while also attending to the super-ego.